Reuse and recycle whenever possible

The Sultanate celebrates the 50th National Day this month and throughout these years, the environment has played a major role in the policies that have been introduced at various stages.

What is that crosses the mind when it comes to individual responsibility towards the environment of Oman?

His Highness Sayyid Tariq bin Shabib al Said reflects, “As individuals we need to focus on wastage and that means less consumption. It also means reduce the amount of packaging, reuse the material and recycle whenever possible.”

HH Sayyid Tariq feels we have been consuming things and discarding them without really thinking about it. “We are now at that point where we need to turn the corner and look at the consequences of what we have been doing and do something about it.

We have been talking about it for a very long time, but it takes an entire generation of young Omanis to basically look at what is being done in the past and say that is not how we behave in the future. I think this turning point is a critical time and we need to recognise that is what it is.”

One of the major assets of Oman as a tourism destination is Oman’s coastline. There are many initiatives that take up cleaning the beaches.

Beaches being one of the favourite leisure destinations have also meant it is one of the causes of pollution because of what people leave behind.

That includes discarded fishing nets to plastics bags and bottles.

“The sense that there is no consequence and no cost to discarding things in nature needs to change. That does not mean we must stop consuming and businesses have to suffer or anything like that. We just have to change the way we do things. And it should not just come from the consumers but it should also come from producers. We are beginning to see it come up across the world. They are much more ethical producers and in turn the ethical consumers gravitate toward them.”

So what would be the biggest concern — the ocean, air or land?

“I think what is required is a holistic view of everything but we also need to prioritise. Let us start with the low hanging fruit, but let us not ignore some of the largest issues. We are seeing a lot more conversations about renewable energy. The new power production projects need to have a certain percentage of renewable energy. It is slowly being baked into how we are doing things. The vision 2040 has an environmental aspect taking us towards that direction.”